


Most Valued and Distinguished

by Argyle



Category: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Illustrated, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:05:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been one hour and thirty-seven minutes since the author's Remington clanked out this: <i>Appendix B: M. Gustave's Formative Years, An Abbreviated Account</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Most Valued and Distinguished

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sparrowinsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowinsky/gifts).



_'Tis to create, and in creating live,  
A being more intense, that we endow  
With form our fancy, gaining as we give  
The life we image, even as I do now._

_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ , III.6.1-4  
George Gordon, Lord Byron

 

It had been one hour and thirty-seven minutes since the author's Remington clanked out this: _Appendix B: M. Gustave's Formative Years, An Abbreviated Account_.

In that time, he drank two cups of milky Darjeeling; filed a hangnail from his left index finger; inspected his hairline for greys, and finding four, pinched them free; and listened to _Sketches of Spain_ , side two, on the hand crank gramophone his grandfather gave him for his twelfth birthday, and which he had, quite obstinately really, gone to great lengths and expense to keep in working order. And then he listened to the low, infinite snick-hiss of the needle failing to find purchase after it looped into the vinyl's final groove.

And then: _Popular supposition suggests…_

\- = -

Werner Liebfrauenmilch, the most celebrated taxidermist in Zubrowka, was having a bad night at the _bouillotte_ table. He bet away the forty-eight Klubecks he had in his purse. Then he bet away the four hundred and seventy-three Klubecks he had in his bank account.

He was sweating. Gus watched a droplet of perspiration trace down from the pink dome of his head, and knew that there was nothing left—or nothing but this: the shop.

Then Liebfrauenmilch coughed and said, "I'll raise you. I wager my apprentice on it."

"You're mad," one of the other players said, tossing his cards away.

Another: "He's drunk."

But the third looked him in the eye. "Your apprentice?"

And Gus said, "Me?"

Which was how Gus came to meet M. Henri, Head Concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel.

It was growing light out by the time they left the gambling hall—likewise known as the backroom of Heinrich's Sundries, &c. on all but the the first and third Thursday nights of the month. Gus would never see his former master again. But frankly, that was fine by Gus: Liebfrauenmilch was a roustabout, and worse, he snored with the roaring timbre of a thousand blood-thirsty hogs. Gus hadn't had a solid night's sleep in the eighteen months since he'd been taken under Liebfrauenmilch's wing. 

Also: Gus simply lacked the stomach for taxidermy.

But it just so happened that M. Henri was in need of a Lobby Boy.

"Well?"

Gus examined the cut of M. Henri's trousers, the polished plum cuff which peeped out from beneath his greatcoat, and was confident the hospitality field would be more to his liking. "I believe so, sir."

"Do you have anything – any belongings – you'll need to send for in… where do you live?"

"Landkreis der Kleine Glückliche Hunde. And no, sir."

"Family?"

Gus shook his head.

"You're what… fifteen?"

Instinctively, Gus opened his mouth: he was used to being at least twenty to most people. "Um." He swallowed. Then he nodded.

"Okay." Not without a little skepticism, Henri looked at him. "What's your name, kid?"

"Gus."

"Is that short for something?"

"Gustave."

Gus fought the urge to ask if the man wanted to check his mouth as one would a horse, and oughtn't they be on their way? Then Henri smiled. "Gustave. That's good. We can work with that." He began walking away.

After a long moment, Gus trotted after him.

*

Gustave Martin Hidvégi was born in Zalaegerszeg in June of 1889. His parents, János and Anna, owned an orchard known to produce a variant of Esopus Spitzenburg apples that were highly prized by the local cidermakers—as well as those who operated as far away as Őrimagyarósd.

For a time, they were very happy.

When Gus was ten, when the harvest had not yet begun; when one day the late-September sun crested and drooped in the western sky, he climbed the tallest of the trees. He perched on a high branch and began to pick the best of the lot, pocketing the ones that were firm, sun-warmed and worm-free.

And then he rose. It was dangerous, he knew, but he was able to hold a booted foot to the trunk and a branch at each arm as he peeked through to the top. Honestly, it wasn't that high. No more than twenty feet. But from there, right then, he reckoned he could see farther than he ever had.

He observed the stream as it hemmed the orchard, and the orchard beyond that. The fallow fields. And behind him, at some distance, the city.

Then he climbed down.

Later, he'd watch his mother peel seven perfect apples with a short, sharp knife.

She'd bake them into a pie. And later: they'd eat it.

Years after, he would remember that tart, sweet flavor, and nothing more.

*

The funicular clattered up and up—

And the world opened. The Grand Budapest Hotel materialized out of the low clouds like a dream, a palace made of marzipan and cream: six floors; seventeen common rooms; one hundred and twelve guest rooms, most with panoramic views of the Zubrowkan Alps, each furnished with opulence and immense attention to detail; and the Lobby—Well.

Gus had never seen anything quite like it.

"Holy fuck," he whispered.

Henri shot him a look. Then his expression softened. "Yeah. She's really something, isn't she?"

*

M. Henri – formerly one Hank Pimm of Paducah, Kentucky, Gus would learn some years later – resided in a set of three third-floor rooms at the Hotel's northeast corner.

However, Gus was unsure if Henri ever actually slept there, for no matter the hour or day the man rarely strayed far from his desk. He'd never even seen Henri out of his livery. When he rose in the morning, toeing down to the Lobby at five in the morning or earlier, Henri would already be engrossed in the day's activities; when Gus retreated to his own sparse lodgings, Henri nodded and said, "You've done well today, Gustave. But I think you can do better."

Henri took his eggs over-hard, and his steak bloody rare. Daily, he drank no fewer than six cups of Lapsang Souchong and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes—though never in view of the guests.

Once a month, he took the funicular down to Lutz and played _bouillotte_.

And invariably, he won.

*

What Gus came to realize was that when the Season arrived, it did so with all its trappings unfurled. There was no middle ground. M. Henri told him this: oh, sure, a few overeager patrons – the newly moneyed and the regretfully idiotic – would arrive a week or more early in the mistaken belief that they'd be better able to claim the best table in the house, the best rooms, for themselves. This almost always backfired and the patrons quite predictably had no choice but to make themselves scarce about the Baths and Great Hall in the following months.

"But the Season— When the Season begins," Henri waxed, stretching his palm in a tight gesture that somehow took in the whole of the Lobby, "the Grand Budapest is ready."

Gus allowed himself the luxury of a moment, of an awed smile, as he stared out at the barons and margraves and counts; the fürsts and knyazes; the ladies with their ladies-in-waiting; the valets hauling carts of parcels and portmanteaus; the _cacophony_ of them all, like a thousand-thousand warblers set upon a barley field just harvested. He stared at it all and felt nothing if not at home.

He had been the Lobby Boy for seven days.

"What are my orders, sir? What shall I do?"

Henri said, "You'll know."

"Yes, sir," said Gus, warily. But damned if he didn't _know_ just the same.

\- = -

_…that heroes are not born; they are made._

The author lit a cigarette and took a thoughtful drag.

Not a bad beginning. Not bad at all.

  



End file.
